Last week I purchased a new computer. Well, to be honest, it was a new-to-me computer at a very good price. The time has come; my current computer pauses every few words to display the Spinning Rainbow Candy of Death. Every action produces a terrifying pause before the computer’s response.
This iMac, born in 2009, is a hand-me-down from my late former husband Peter. It is filled with irreplaceable photographs and files. Every so often it exposes a long-hidden secret. Most of the files are mine, but it is hard to tell to whom the secrets may belong.
When my children were younger they used this computer to play a lot of games. Over the years they drifted to other computers, none of them Macs, to play. In the last week I have deleted tens of thousands of small files that will not need to be transferred to the newer iMac.
The new Mac won’t arrive at my local Best Buy until next Friday, and tomorrow I’ll set up an appointment at which I will bring in the current computer and have the files transferred.
I never named this computer — I didn’t need to. In every logon, in every Bluetooth linkage, the name was there: Peter Hall’s iMac. He owned it for a year or two; I have owned it for twelve years. But when I get the new computer, this link to the past will finally need to be broken. Every device connected to the old computer will need a fresh connection to the new one. And, whether I wish it or not, some connections may be lost forever.
Peter died ten years ago, and because he died before his birthday I am now the same age that he was when he died. This is rather disconcerting to me, and I don’t know how to resolve that or whether that is possible. I have out-aged Michael, too, and while it is somewhat amusing to think of the two of them bickering with each other on some ethereal plane, I don’t think that’s the truth. It’s not a truth either of them would have believed, anyway.
So, here I am squeezing the last few drops of life out of this computer because I can’t imagine giving anything up while there’s still some use to it. It’s been years since we could keep the operating system current on the Mac, and I suspect that the current slowdown is due to some program having tried to bootstrap itself into a newer OS than the computer can handle.
The new computer is going to look exactly like the old one. I’m not an early adopter any more; I’ve explained to many people over the years that I’m more comfortable with OS 12.5.17.c than OS 13.1.a. The cutting edge is expense and risky, and I’m willing to let others live there. As much as I liked the look of the new iMac (and the thought of its M1 chip) I liked the price of a refurbished iMac a lot better.
I’m trying to honor the spirit of this computer by allowing it to participate in my blog for as long as possible. That now means a lag of a few minutes each time I compose a sentence, scroll up to see what I’ve previously written, or click to open a new tab and search for an appropriate image to illustrate some text. To deal with the lags, I take breaks. I stand up and walk around. I shift the laundry over. I try to be as patient as I can when the computer can’t keep up — which, now, is all the time.
I think that the new iMac deserves a name. If you have any suggestions, please let me know in the comments. Also, give me some reasons for your name suggestion. In the past some of my computers have had names, but it was more often the hard drive rather than the computer that received the naming.
With that invitation having been issued, I think I’ll publish this post early and give my old friend more time to rest this evening. Thanks, buddy.
Chocolate Sheep 